


Pandora's Box

by ktbl



Series: Paper Rings [7]
Category: Mortal Kombat (Video Games)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Be Careful What You Wish For, Curiosity, Emotions, F/M, Father-Daughter Relationship, Long Live Feedback Comment Project, Secrets, Temptation, vanishing twin syndrome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-10
Updated: 2021-01-10
Packaged: 2021-03-13 23:08:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,879
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28661487
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ktbl/pseuds/ktbl
Summary: There's been a box occupying a section of Sonya's dresser as long as they've been married, and Johnny has managed to successfully keep his fingers out of it. But now she's gone on a training exercise, and he can't restrain himself any longer.
Relationships: Johnny Cage & Cassie Cage, Sonya Blade/Johnny Cage
Series: Paper Rings [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1727047
Comments: 15
Kudos: 17





	Pandora's Box

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: This contains vanishing twin syndrome. I started it a little bit before writing Consequences, but have been working on it on and off whenever the mood struck me. You can read both as stand-alone pieces, but this complements it, and some of Sonya's statements are inspired by the contents herein.

Curiosity gets to him.

There’s a box on Sonya’s dresser, a not-quite cube out of old wood and inlaid with designs in pewter, looking exactly like it should have come out of a farmhouse a hundred years ago. He’s never seen her open it, never seen her move it, but he’s hefted it once or twice and heard a soft  _ clink _ , so he knows it’s full of something. She keeps the jewelry he’s given her in a different place, necklaces and bracelets and earrings, each tucked neatly away in a velvet-lined case or suspended from a hook.

She’s never explicitly said  _ not _ to open the box, and he’s never asked if he can. It’s been sitting in a nebulous, liminal state of existing and yet never being discussed, a small brown and silver elephant in the room. 

And now that she’s out for a week on a training exercise, he decides it’s the time to be properly nosy. He can’t stand it anymore, not knowing what it is: he’s waited three years, watching it on her dresser ever since he moved in, and he just can’t take it anymore.

Cassie sleeps the sleep of the toddler down the hall, a starfish taking up more than her fair share of her bed. Reassured by a quick check on her, he heads back to the bedroom and lifts the box off Sonya’s dresser with a mix of reverence and nervousness. He sits down on the edge of the bed and settles it next to him and flips up the clasp; she’s never locked it. His jaw almost drops with the sight of what lies within.

On the top are a handful of newspaper and magazine articles folded up on themselves. He pulls each out. The first is the small, sedate announcement in her mother’s hometown paper about their wedding, and he can tell it was written by a local because it’s all about her and barely anything about him - just “Johnny Cage, Hollywood film actor”. He might feel wounded if he hadn’t seen what it was tucked into: one of the dozens of splashy articles that covered their wedding. 

She’s picked the one that has the photo of the two of them kissing as they exit the church, frozen under a row of sabers from the honor guard, him in his tux and her in her service dress all bedecked with medals. Another clipping is the engagement announcement by one of the gossip rags, which brings him up short. Usually he’s only seen her pick the ones he buys up and throw them in the garbage.

The fact that she cut out the comments about the despair of all the women now that Johnny Cage has hooked himself up with one of the heroes of the Battle of New York, some no-name soldier, and has marked it up with a highlighter and ballpoint pen, just makes him laugh. It’s a marked contrast to the wedding announcement from the Austin paper. He grins and shakes his head. 

“She’s like an ogre,” he mutters to himself, “but mostly the onion part. Well, and the dealing with people part.” Layers on layers.

There are three medals, a cross and a star and one with the American eagle and “DISTINGUISHED SERVICE MEDAL” around the outside. He knows what these are from being in Hollywood, and he lets them dangle from his fingers in shock. His wife has a fucking Medal of Honor, and she’s never said one word about it. And a Distinguished Service Cross, and a Distinguished Service Medal, and all of a sudden he feels like the awards he’s so proud of, sitting in the living room mean nothing. She keeps  _ these _ in a box gone vaguely dusty. He lifts each of the medals out carefully and sets them on the bed beside him. Three of the highest awards possible for a soldier, and she has them. She’s  _ alive _ and she has three of them. She really is too good for him. All the trite lines play through his head - including the G.I. Joe theme song - and he wonders if she’d kill him if he started humming it around her. 

He’ll give it a try anyway and see what happens.

He doesn’t stop after the medals, determined to see what else she’s tucked away inside. There’s an old battered gold ring, bigger than would fit on any of her fingers, and he guesses it’s her father’s old wedding ring. There’s also a toy ring that looks like it came out of one of those supermarket quarter machines, still in its plastic bubble, and it does look her size. He wonders what the story is with that, to be nestled away with proof of being a heroine and memories of her father. There are a handful of other trinkets - several small plaques smaller than his thumb that probably came off awards. They declare SONYA BLADE winner of first place in the Texas State Gymnastics competitions back when she would have been in high school; another declares her the champion at a national-level gymnastics conference. A ring that definitely looks like an old engagement ring, gold weathered with age, with a surprisingly large diamond and two small clusters of pearls on either side. A couple of keys, a copy of her birth certificate, and one of Cassie’s; a copy of their marriage certificate, notarized and neatly folded. 

At the bottom, shoved beneath everything else, sits a small thin clear bag, smoothed down and taped closed. There’s a piece of what looks like plain white paper in it. He picks it up, expecting a picture of her family or maybe some risqué nude shots from her earlier days - important enough to keep, but not something she wants to look at, given the way it’s been put at the bottom and hidden away. If he’s lucky it’ll be a little fuel for the spank bank, not that he needed much when she was concerned.

He flips it over and blinks. An ultrasound?

She’d been pregnant before? 

He frowns, looking at it closer. It looks in good shape. There are two circles, two notes with dimensions - twins. Shit, she’d been pregnant with twins before? When? Who was  _ that _ baby daddy? That partner Kano took out? The idea is a knife in the ribs, sliding slow and deep into him. Jealousy of whoever had her first, that Cassie wasn’t her first. Sadness that she lost kids - maybe that’s why, even when everything went to hell, she wanted to keep Cassie. Lost two before. 

His eyes settle on the header, read out the information, and his eyes go wide, his heartbeat stuttering before it stops entirely. The dates are the same as on Cassie’s ultrasound. The one Sonya showed him, the one he keeps on the fridge - these dates match up. Well, almost the same; this is about a month before Sonya showed up and rocked his world. It’s rocked again, now.

Possibly shattered. He’s not sure.

His fingers lose the grip on the paper, and it drops back into the box, the sound heavier than any piece of paper has a right to be. 

He could have - should have - had two kids. Two babies, two hellions in the room down the hall. Two tiny souls to cuddle at night when Sonya was out late, two little people to call him Dad and to make his life an amazing, wonderful, sleepless hell. She should have been twice as big (though maybe not twice as grouchy, no one would want to live through that), and he should have had two blonde-haired babies in his house.

Cassie and a brother, or a sister? Who knows. Suddenly he’s full of tears and heartbreak for a child he never knew hadn’t existed until that moment. He wants to pack everything up and rush and cuddle his baby girl, except even at three she’ll sass him about waking her up. 

He doesn’t care. He tucks everything carefully back into the box with trembling hands, mind busy with the idea of what he never knew he lost.

He wants to call Sonya and demand an explanation. His fingers are halfway to his phone before his brain catches up and points out this would be a  _ terrible fucking plan _ to call her while she’s on exercises, about a box he probably shouldn’t have opened anyway and the fact that she never even hinted, never implied, there had been two.

Shit, how much of a mess was she when she found out - and then lost one? And she never burdened him with that, she’s just been carrying it alone and silently the entire time. 

It’s a sobering thought, but suddenly all he wants is a very large, very stiff drink.

He promises himself to ask about the box when she gets back, see what she says, if there’s any hope at talking about this or any of the other mementos tucked inside. He puts everything back in, carefully, still goggling at the medals and confused by the rings and keys, and drops the latch again, puts it back in place on her dresser. 

“Daddy?” 

The voice at his door shakes him out of the confused state, and he spins around. Cassie, bleary-eyed and tired, stands in his doorway in her elephant pajamas. “Thirsty. Need a drink.”

“Me too, kiddo.” Although the one he wants is significantly stronger than what she’ll get. “C’mere.” He reaches for her; she obligingly toddles forward, almost falling into his arms half-asleep. He lifts her and buries his face in her blonde hair, holding her tight. “Let’s get you a drink and then back to bed. Your mom’d kill me if she knew you were up this late.”

“Ouch. Squashing me.” She’s tired and yawns loudly in his ear, before tucking her head against his shoulder. She’s a reassuringly warm weight as he carries her and down to the kitchen, and he can’t help but wonder how it would have felt to carry two downstairs, balancing them. He pours Cassie a small cup of water and downs a larger one himself, resisting the urge to doctor it with something stronger, before climbing back up to tuck her back into bed. 

He pauses in the doorway to her room, and then pivots around and heads back to the master bedroom.

“Daddy?”

“C’mon, princess. Tonight you can sleep on your mom’s side of the bed. How does that sound?”

Cassie’s eyes go wide, elated at the treat rarely afforded to her. She’s always welcome in their bed after a bad dream or when she isn’t feeling well, but just getting to climb in and steal all the blankets and thrash around on the California king mattress is still extra special. She nods enthusiastically. There may be a little more playtime than Sonya would approve of before Cassie finally settles down, a bundle of warmth taking up far too much space than seems possible for a three year old.

It’s easier than he expects to go to sleep, but he attributes it entirely to being able to reach out and know that his daughter is safe and sound and  _ here _ . 

Even if she does have a tendency to kick him in the stomach in her sleep.

**Author's Note:**

> This story is part of the [LLF Comment Project](https://longlivefeedback.tumblr.com/llfcommentproject), which was created to improve communication between readers and authors. This author invites and appreciates feedback, including:
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